Facebook’s VP Product Management Chamath Palihapitiya no longer runs Facebook Platform, we’ve independently confirmed after reading a VentureBeat report.
Replacing Palihapitiya, who will now focus on product, is newly hired VP of Communications and Public Policy Elliot Schrage, who recently joined Facebook from Google.
Why replace an engineer with a lawyer as head of a developer-facing platform? From what we hear, the thinking is that the policy side of Facebook Platform is becoming more important than ever. For most of the last year Facebook dealt with renegade app developers via algorithmically enforced rules that determined how “viral” they could go. But more recently they’ve been making more general, subjective calls on how applications can behave. Creating and enforcing these policies is the job of a “diplomat,” says our source, and Schrage is uniquely qualified for the job. Presumably Schrage will have plenty of right hand guys to figure out all that technical stuff that makes up the platform.
This also shows the continued weeding out and neutering of the old guard at Facebook. Palihaptiya at one time ran about a third of the company, including product, marketing and the platform. He’ll now focus mostly on product, but at least he’s staying. Peers of his like Matt Cohler, Owen Van Natta, and Adam D’Angelo all left the company this year as Schrage and new COO Sheryl Sandberg came on board from Google.
There are more changes on the way.
Another person that got Sandberg’d. Is Zuck next? He’s the only incompetent person left in the leadership circle.
zuckerberg has three board seats. I think his job is fairly secure.
This makes a lot of sense, the platform is built out, architected, and managed by a competent team of engineers.
It’s obvious there’s more political developments than actual engineering ones, fuck it, give it to Elliot to manage.
Just an observation here, not a-propos of this post…
Is it just me, or are there far fewer pieces now on TechCrunch about nascent, just-funded startups, than there were, say, 6 months or a year ago?
It seems that 80% of the posts now are about Facebook, Google, Microsoft/Yahoo, or the iPhone.
With a lot fewer articles about innovative new startups, is this a warning sign that the web 2.0 VC run-up has run out of steam, or is being extinguished by the current bad economy?
I agree with Joe T. part of the reason I like TechCrunch is to inform about all the innovative ideas from new startups in turn fuel my own. Lately we’ve seen way too many postings about Facebook, Microsoft, yahoo and google I can get these kind of news from cnet.
There are some major things wrong with the platform. I hope this move helps things.
Did anybody notice mybloglog’s widget on the right panel of techcrunch now replaced by seesmic. nice move mike.
Well done.I like Facebook!!!!
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Tall singles waiting to hook up @ Tallchat.com
@Joey T. you forgot to add twitter to the list
Zuckerberg will really have to work hard to save his company’s image(like what’s happening to Y!)
Yeah I agree too. The reason we keep coming back is to get away from all the main stream reproduced garbage we see over and over again.
Techcrunch rules though!
I feel bad now. I love Facebook!
I agree also, facebook will have the same problem of image as y! does . zuckerberg has to work a lot to save it
brian
http://www.themostpowerfulcompany.com
It is new kind of colonization. Google sent its execs to facebook as trozan horse. And Zuck unable to find a gf, thus behaving eratically. Bad.
“Google sent its execs to facebook as trozan horse”, if that happen, it’s tough to find out which one is good and bad. It will create a whole culture of cold war where everything seem fine at the surface but you never know when the big storm will come.
It’s definitely a disaster for fb. From my observation, fb recent change was missing the spirit of its original (tightly control, obsessively against partners, too anxious about seeing other companies surpassing fb) instead of (openness, help partners succeeded and in turn ultimately make fb compatible to the next Google. Should focus on innovation, instead working on controling. Very much turn their vision around)
I had a bad feeling that with the recent changes and its new restructure, the platform momentum will be kill and it means there won’t be next google.
What fb should to now:
1. Start open more, i mean even more than google
2. Cooperate with other companies and extend their services
3. It is now the time to thing bigger than fb themselves, goes IPO. Raise money, buy search company, launch new services and compete with Google.
It’s very sad to see them doing the other way around. As a matter of facts, they can’t escape the shadow of Google and Google will go after them no matter what. If they just stay in there comfort zone, putting the wall on everyone, they will never leap forward and it will not for long until Google bring them to the ground!
FB not a smart one when they have all the advantages, spirit, popularity, fame, celebrity frenzy, backing of thousands, thousands of developers, everyone talk about and want a piece of its … but I see all of the disappear now and it not the way it should end up to if the management team just not screw it up!!!
I think fb need a wake up call!!!
Joe T is right. TechCrunch has lost its startup focus and is all about iPhone, Google, Microsoft/Yahoo, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook. Serious yawnathon guys.
I’m OK with Techcrunch. I think they do a pretty good job.
As for facebook.. I wonder if this move is going to undermine the new upgrade just around the corner (supposedly released for soft rollout today?)
TechCrunch does a great job. I’m not saying they don’t.
But when there’s nothing to report about startups, because the economy and the whole VC thing is crashing, they have to fill in the space with something, so they write about big companies like Microsoft and Facebook, and technologies that are constantly generating buzz in the media, like Twitter and the iPhone.
The problem isn’t with TechCrunch, it’s with the economy.
Looks like the Web 2.0 VC startup party is over. The changes in TechCrunch focus is just an indicator of that. This says volumes without TechCrunch actually saying “party over, go home”.
This things Facebook I can not imagine that this social network site got this big. I can remeber the moments when around 10000 members were. Now that a diplomat is on top of Facebook. See how petty dough the goverment is paying this diplomat, the whole c.v of this guy must be some topnotch high astrological and universally high to get hired by this mega Facebook.
@ PraShawn - what…?